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Going for a Trilogy

My, the consummate stand-alone novel guy, is going for a trilogy. I mentioned a while back that I was wading into virgin territory by starting a sequel to my finished yet unpublished novel “A Man too Old for a Place too Far.” As I’ve been working on the sequel, the stories line just keep ballooning and advancing in unexpected ways. Finally, today, I realized that there is no way I’m going to wrap up this story by the end of the second novel, but a third, yes, can be done. Probably should be done. I don’t want to drag it out indefinitely. I do like closure. That’s why I write standalones.

But in this one, I fleshed out 6 weaving story lines. Does that sound like a lot? Perhaps. But they are all interconnected in unique and fun ways. It will be a pleasure to see how they overlap and tie up in a beautifully satisfying bow at the end of book three. That’s the goal, at least.

And that brings me to outlining. I’ve never outlined before, but with overlapping story lines and three novels, it is starting to feel more nature. I have, at least at this point, figured out the very ending of the trilogy. That’s where I want to go. It could change, of course, but it gives me a clear goal to get to. Now it is just one big puzzle with many moving parts and I have to put the Rubik’s cube back together again. At least this is the cube that I created. I have the playbook. So there!

It’s also a reason why I slowed down the release of Book 1. I want to make sure I have all three books well thought-out before I release the first and regret it later because of a great new idea.

So the first Sasse trilogy is in the mix. It’s a tough genre to describe. Historical fiction, contemporary adventure, time travel, magical realism. And go ahead, throw in a few more.

I asked one of my beta readers of book 1 how he would categorize it. He said that that is a good question, and unfortunately, there were no good answers.

My goal would be to have the trilogy completely written by the end of 2017. First book published by summer’s end with books 2 & 3 coming along in 2018.